This invention relates to a system for recording information on a recording medium, such as an optical disk, or reproducing the information recorded on the medium, and more particularly to a recording medium on which multilingual information has been recorded and a reproducing system for the recording medium.
In recent years, optical disks on which compressed video information, sub-picture information, and audio information are recorded have been developed. The optical disks have the sub-picture information and audio information recorded on them in various languages. In playback, any one of the languages can be chosen by an application program running on the reproducing system. The sub-picture information includes subtitles and captions added to movies. Such optical disks can be produced for use in many countries where people speak different languages.
When the sub-picture information is reproduced and subtitles appear on the display, it sometimes seems to the viewer that the letters are too small to read or the words are too difficult to understand, because the language and vocabulary have been determined by the producer beforehand.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a multilingual recording medium that enables users to select standard language and standard size subtitles as well as easy-to-see large letters, plain words intended for children, and even commentary in the same language, and a reproducing system for the multilingual recording medium.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a multilingual recording medium that enables users to select from, not only normal speech in a language, but also plain speech intended for children, and even commentary speech in the same language, and a reproducing system for the multilingual recording medium.
The foregoing objects are accomplished by providing a recording medium having a data area in which main picture information, sub-picture information for constructing streams, are recorded along with audio information and a management area in which attribute information used to identify the streams has been recorded, the multilingual recording medium characterized in that the attribute information is supplemented with specific codes indicating kinds of language and a code extension indicating differences in the size of characters and/or description in the same language, and the data area has a stream of the sub-picture information determined by the specific code and code extension recorded in it.
Furthermore, a recording medium of the present invention contains a data area in which main picture information and sub-picture information used to construct sub-picture streams, and audio information used to construct audio streams have been recorded and a management area in which attribute information used to identify the sub-picture streams and the audio streams have been recorded.
The attribute information is supplemented with sub-picture specific code indicating the kinds of language used in sub-pictures and a sub-picture code extension indicating differences in the size of characters and/or description in the same language. The attributes information also contains audio specific codes which indicate the kinds of language used in audio and an audio code extension which indicates the differences in description in the same language.
The data area has a stream of the sub-picture information which is determined by the sub-picture specific code and the sub-picture code extension and the audio stream is determined by the audio specific code and audio code extension recorded in it.
Furthermore, a reproducing system of the present invention comprises a means for reading the data from the management area, for recognizing the contents of the attribute information, for tabulating pieces of information on the streams, and for displaying the contents of each stream on playback in the form of a menu screen. Also, playback means for reproducing the sub-picture information corresponding to the selected stream, when there has been an operation input to the effect that one of the pieces of information on the streams displayed on the menu screen will be chosen.
Still furthermore, a reproducing system of the present invention comprises a means for reading the data from the management area, for recognizing the contents of the attribute information, for tabulating pieces of information on the sub-picture streams and pieces of information on the audio streams, and for displaying the contents of each sub-picture stream and each audio stream on playback in the form of a menu screen. Also, playback means for reproducing the sub-picture information and audio information corresponding to the selected stream, when there has been an operation input to the effect that one of the pieces of information on the streams displayed on the menu screen will be chosen.
On playback of the information from the recording medium, it is possible to choose and display different character sizes, or a different description in the same language, or reproduce a different vocal description in the same language, (e.g., such as a vocal description with comments).